Fold
by Sparkly Faerie
Summary: "Sometimes, time folds in on itself in the TARDIS. It's not meant to, of course, but when the Doctor starts meddling with the console—well, this happens." Rose meets a strange woman in the TARDIS swimming pool.


**Someone needs to take Word away from me.**

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**Disclaimer: **I do not own Doctor Who or anything associated with it. All rights to Doctor Who and affiliated products belong to the BBC and the other proper entities.

**Summary:** "Sometimes, time folds in on itself in the TARDIS. It's not meant to, of course, but when the Doctor starts meddling with the console—well, this happens." Rose meets a strange woman in the TARDIS swimming pool.

**Rating:** K

**Genre:** General

**Warnings:** None.

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**Fold**

Some days, Rose simply wanted to explore the TARDIS. She left Jack and the Doctor in the console room, talking about some event from the fifty-first century that they'd apparently both attended, before they'd met. She'd felt a little out of place as they laughed, talking about mutual acquaintances. It was, Rose thought, quite a small Universe after all.

She excused herself as the men tinkered with the underside of the TARDIS console, and wandered off down the corridor, collecting her bathing suit and a towel from her room and changing into it. Knotting the towel around her waist, she padded, barefoot, toward the swimming pool.

She stood at the door and waited for it to open, tapping her bare foot against the ground. It was taking longer than necessary. "Oh, come on." She muttered to herself, stretching her neck.

When the door finally slid open, she stepped into the room and peered around.

He must have redecorated again, she thought. The pool had changed no less than three times since she'd first come on board, though this was the most elaborate of them all. A large water slide beckoned from across the room, with large, circle-shaped pools dotting the floor here and there. Each of them was a different colour and, judging by the steam some of them were letting off, the temperatures varied. The walls were colourful—which she thought odd. The Doctor was a bit eccentric, but he tended to prefer things a little darker.

"Oh, not _again_." A voice sighed from across the room.

Rose jumped with a squeak, crossing her arms over her chest and spinning towards the source. "Relax, dear." The woman eased herself out of the water and reached for a towel. "I don't bite."

"Who are you?" Rose demanded. "How did you get in here?"

The woman ignored her, folding it over her arm. Water ran down through her hair and into the collar of her TARDIS-blue bathing suit, dripping from her legs and leaving little puddles of water as she walked. She was older than Rose—perhaps about Jackie's age. "He must be fiddling with the temporal buffers. Again." She grumbled. "I swear, if I've told the man once, I've told him a _hundred _times…!"

Rose backed away, toward the door. The woman was walking away, toward a different pool. "Who are you?" She demanded again, thinking that, if she could just get out the door and back to the console room, she could alert the Doctor and Jack to the intrusion.

"I wouldn't bother telling him." The woman called out without turning around, draping her towel across the rail and easing herself into the water, dipping under and emerging with a satisfied sigh. "You wont be able to find this room again once you leave it."

"What are you talking about?"

The woman finally turned back around. Rose stared at her across the vast room, wary. "Sometimes, time folds in on itself in the TARDIS." The woman explained. "It's not meant to, of course, but when the Doctor starts meddling with the console—well, this happens." She lifted a hand and beckoned Rose forward. "Come in. Join me."

"Who are you, though?" Rose asked again, stepping forward and hovering uncertainly a few feet away from the pool that the stranger was in.

The older woman shrugged. "Can't tell you. I can't risk you telling the Doctor."

Rose took a step back. "_What_?"

The woman approached the edge of the pool, leaning her arms on the tiles at its edge. "You know what I said, about time folding in on itself?"

Rose nodded, looking down at her. "Yeah?"

The woman shrugged. "Think of every door on the TARDIS as a portal." She raked her fingers through her hair. "You've stepped into the room where the pool is supposed to be. But, because the Doctor is doing… _something_ to the temporal buffers—I mean, the thing that keeps time separate in the TARDIS—they're not working properly. Your Doctor is working on them, and so is mine. It makes the two points vulnerable, and they fold in on each other, like a piece of cloth. You've stepped from the TARDIS of your time into the TARDIS of my time."

Rose's eyes widened. "So I'm stuck here?"

The woman shook her head, grey-green eyes amused. "No. The TARDIS is smart. She'll take you back to the right time when you go back through the door."

Rose supposed that made sense. "You said 'again'. Does it happen a lot?"

The stranger shrugged, pushing back from the edge and into the water, drifting away. "Not very often. It's only happened to me thee or four times. So far."

"So you're from… the future, then?" Rose asked, leaning on one of the rails, forcing herself to relax. Surely, if the woman wanted to cause trouble, she would have done it by now, right?

She smiled. "Yes."

"And… you're the Doctor's friend?" She guessed.

The woman stretched her arms up, exposing a lot of ivory skin and pushing her breasts up. "You could say that." Her tone was a little strange, Rose thought. "Are you going to join me, or not?"

Rose shook her head. "Sorry. This is all a bit… weird. Even for me."

The woman smiled. "I understand." She nodded. "Step through that door and back out into the corridor. Let it close. When it opens again, it should be your swimming pool. Please, don't tell the Doctor. He might blow a hole in the fabric of reality trying to do it on purpose."

"I wont." Rose offered a tentative smile, turning around and walking away.

"Oh, and Rose?" The woman called out as Rose stepped into the corridor.

She spun on the spot. "How did you—?"

The stranger was waving as the doors began to close. "It was nice meeting you, dear."

The door closed, cutting her off from sight. Rose held her breath for about ten seconds, until the door opened again.

She stepped into the swimming pool she knew, bewildered, looking around. No sign of the strange woman.

"Should've just gone to bed." Rose grumbled, hanging up her towel.

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**Thanks for reading. I'd appreciate a review.**

**Sparkly Faerie**


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